The Nikkei reported early this morning that Japan’s second largest telco KDDI will acquire a full stake in Tokyo-based Soracom, a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) startup offering data service optimized for IoT (Internet of Things). The acquisition price is reportedly about 20 billion yen ($180 million US). Founded in 2014 by former Amazon Web Services engineer Ken Tamagawa, the mobile company has now become a 40-people team serving about 7,000 businesses in Japan as well as around 800 companies in the US and Europe.

KDDI started working on IoT-optimized services last year including several efforts like a massive partnership with Toyota for serving connected cars. In February of this year the Japanese telco acquired Iret, the Japanese startup behind cloud-based solution suite Cloudpack, while the former also announced in March that it would jointly set up a new company called ARISE Analytics with Accenture, aiming to promote data analytics businesses.

Masaru started his career as a programmer/engineer, and previously co-founded several system integration companies and consulting firms. He’s been traveling around Silicon Valley and Asia exploring the IT industry, and he also curates event updates for the Tokyo edition of Startup Digest.